Senate Democrats joined Republicans Thursday in questioning the Obama administration’s handling of the fatal Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and why the administration refused for days to acknowledge that it was a terrorist attack linked to al Qaeda.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., circulated a bipartisan letter addressed to Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, asking for an “accounting of the attacks against U.S. missions in Egypt, Libya and Yemen,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Examiner.

The lawmakers are also demanding to know whether the administration had any advance warnings of the Libyan attack and, if so, whether it had shared that information with U.S. personnel on the ground.

The letter marks the first time congressional Democrats have so directly expressed their dissatisfaction with the administration’s response to inquiries about the attacks, which resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others and raised questions about U.S. security throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa.

A Kerry aide confirmed that the committee intended to enlist the support of Republicans and Democrats and said the letter would likely be sent Friday. Another aide told The Examiner that the panel’s 10 Democrats and nine Republicans plan to sign it.

In other words, recognition of obvious bulls*** has now gone bipartisan.

Gabriel Malor in the Daily News writes:

It has been 15 days since the attack in Libya. And where are we? President Obama, who first confidently (but incorrectly) declared that the attack grew spontaneously out of a protest over a YouTube video, has finally admitted that it was an act of terrorism directed against Americans on the anniversary of 9/11. There was no protest before the attack, we now know.

We now know this because of journalists in Libya. We know this because of Libya’s own officials. But we know hardly anything from our own government about what happened in Libya because most of what we were told by the White House was a lie.

The President boldly vowed that the perpetrators — he declined to call them terrorists at the time — would be brought to justice. To that end, he called in the FBI. More than a week later, the FBI flew a team to Tripoli, but that is as far as they got. They have not traveled to Benghazi. They have not examined the scene. They have not collected evidence. They have not interviewed the people the Libyans have arrested. It has been fifteen days since the attack.

Why is this not a scandal yet?

The answer is that the President’s name is no longer George Bush. Had this obvious cover up occurred under W, it would be an epic media played scandal. But today, the media provides cover for a President coming under attack from even his closest political friends, such as Kerry.

That said, it’s actually worse than simply not providing answers that the American people deserve. It’s the active lying prior to, and since, the ensuing attacks.

As we reported earlier, the administration did indeed have advance warning of imminent attacks on 9/11.

CBN News Terrorism Analyst Erick Stakelbeck called Benghazi an al Qaeda “hot spot” and agrees that there was threat there well before the film’s release.

“For the Obama administration to continue to argue that these attacks were just spontaneous flies in the face of reality,” Stakelbeck said.

“One day before the attacks, Ayman al-Zawahri — who’s al Qaeda’s global leader — specifically called for al Qaeda attacks in Libya,” he explained. “One day later we see those attacks.”

This is a cover up of the highest order. The Obama administration knew that attacks were possible and left U.S. consulate buildings unprotected. The administration is directly responsible for the magnitude in which those attacks became successful.

And now, they know that there is evidence that something could have been done to prevent the deaths of these four Americans.As Ed Morrisey writes, the administration “got caught flat-footed on the anniversary of 9/11 in the one part of the world where an American diplomatic mission would be most vulnerable — and they’ve been trying to deny it ever since.”The American people deserve the truth.

About the AuthorRusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss is a freelance journalist focusing on the conservative movement and its political agenda. He has been writing conservatively charged articles for several years in the upstate New York area, and his writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, American Thinker, FoxNews.com, Big Government, the Times Union, and the Troy Record. He is also Editor of one of the top conservative blogs of 2012, the Mental Recession.

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